SCUBA pioneer Dr. Sylvia Earle to receive Bonaire lifetime achievement award

Dr. Sylvia Earle, known as the Ambassador to the world’s oceans, will add another accolade to her impressive array of honors when Bonaire’s first “Lifetime Achievement Award” is bestowed upon her. The award will be made during Celebrate Our Planet Week this summer, August 15-22, 2009, as a highlight week of the Bonaire Dive Into Summer festivities.

At a gala evening event at the Governor’s Residence on Wednesday, August 19, 2009, Dr. Earle will be honored and thanked for her lifetime of dedication to education and conservation of the world’s natural resources. The island’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” is granted to “acknowledge exceptional efforts throughout one’s lifetime to preserve and protect nature, both above and below the water’s surface.”

Also while on Bonaire, Dr. Earle will lead a series of themed dives and activities and will participate in several on-island events designed to highlight Bonaire’s continued leadership in sustainable tourism....[Link]

Call her the diva of diving

It was June 1967, and the 22-year-old woman with a toothy smile from West Chester was aboard a smelly fishing boat with 11 men eager to dive the offshore wreck of the famed Andrea Doria, 220 feet below the Atlantic.
Evelyn Bartram Dudas didn't recover the best artifact - the ship's compass, which went to her future husband, John Dudas - but she returned from the trip a hero as the first woman to reach what is considered the Mount Everest of shipwrecks.

It was a defining moment in the life of the now 64-year-old scuba entrepreneur, who owns a well-known Westtown dive shop, teaches, and leads diving trips around the world, and it landed her a spot as a contestant on TV's To Tell the Truth.

Four decades later, on a warm summer afternoon, Evelyn Dudas is back in the water - only this time, it's 12 feet deep. In Malvern Prep's swimming pool, she is teaching a class of mostly young would-be divers a gentle frog kick. They are probably unaware of the exploits that have made Dudas famous within the diving world, leading to her induction in the first class of the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2000...[Link]

College dive program gets $1M gift

With the formal receipt of a $1 million gift on Friday, Florida Keys Community College is planning to expand its marine sciences program to include four-year degrees by 2011.

The princely gift comes from the Lockwood Charitable Foundation, an arm of James E. Lockwood's estate; Lockwood was one of the early pioneers of scuba diving and underwater photography and is credited with many inventions.

One rider on the donation is that FKCC name its marine science program after its benefactor, hence the James E. Lockwood Jr. School of Diving and Underwater Technology.

Marine Sciences Director Patrick Rice told the Keynoter, "This [gift] is really very important to us. This is going to be the foundation we can build on."

So what is FKCC building exactly?

Currently, the marine sciences program includes a two-year associate's degree in arts marine/aquatic biology and a two-year associate's in science marine environmental technology...[KeysNet.com]

Local News * Home * News * Local News * Scuba pioneer honoured Downtown Computers Scuba pioneer honoured

A Brechin man was honoured as one of the pioneers of scuba diving at an event earlier this month in the Bahamas.

Alec Peirce has been diving since the earliest days ofSea Hunt,when Lloyd Bridges played the ex-Navy frogman Mike Nelson -- 1958 for those with shorter memories. Peirce said he got the diving bug early at a time when parents and teachers thought diving added up to taking your life in your hands.

"They were dead set against it," Peirce said from his store

in Richmond Hill. "But I was a bit of a rebel and had an active imagination."

Peirce said he dove solo in equipment he bought from the mailman for $75.

"My old black rubber suit wouldn't be allowed today," he said. "Now it's all safe, but everybody's doing it."

Peirce doesn't begrudge the changes; in fact he's been an agent of them.

He was recognized at the April 6 International Legends of Diving event in Lucaya, Bahamas. The award is in recognition of his "outstanding service and dedication to the sport of diving," especially the training and safety work he's been involved in...[Packet&Times]

Jean Painlevé's underwater revolution

Long before the high-definition panoramas of "Planet Earth," before even the landmark wildlife documentaries of Richard Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau, a Frenchman named Jean Painlevé was making films that captured the natural world as it had never been seen before.

The son of a mathematician turned politician (who twice served as French prime minister), Painlevé (1902-89) spent his life straddling the arts and the sciences.

He studied biology at the Sorbonne but was also a habitué of the Dada-mad Paris salons of the 1920s, where he befriended the likes of Man Ray and Luis Buñuel. Accordingly, his films, which mostly focused on underwater life, fused a scientist's eye for observation with a surrealist's taste for the uncanny.

A new three-disc release from the Criterion Collection titled "Science Is Fiction" due out this week brings together 23 of his short films and an eight-part made-for-TV documentary, featuring an interview with the octogenarian Painlevé, not long before his death...[LATimes]

Scuba Diving Pioneers Honoured

Two well known Caymanian dive pioneers: Stuart Freeman, owner of Eden Rock; and Ollen Miller, owner of Sundivers were honoured for their achievements and outstanding contributions to the sport of scuba diving.

They were honoured at the annual International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction Ceremony held at Pedro Castle St James on Thursday, 29 January.

The Department of Tourism (DoT) explained that every year, in addition to the international inductees, the Ministry of Tourism honours Caymanians and pays tribute to the invaluable role they have played in the process which has transformed Cayman into the premier dive destination that it is today. All awards were presented by the Minister of Tourism, Environment, Investment & Commerce, Hon Charles Clifford.

“Both individuals have been trailblazers in Cayman’s dive industry,” Mr Clifford in a statement before the event. “I congratulate them for having passion and foresight and for dedicating their lives to the sport of scuba diving.”

DoT stated that Mr Freeman has dedicated 40 years to the sea and to the watersports industry. From the onset of his adulthood through to present day, Mr Freeman has stayed true to his calling and continuously helps to protect and develop Cayman’s diving industry. ..[CaymanNetNews]